The Ghana National Gas Company (Ghana Gas) has indicated it has scheduled a planned maintenance shutdown of the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant starting from February 1, 2018.
This outage is consistent with other shutdowns planned by its upstream and downstream partners.
A press release issued and signed by Ernest Owusu-Bempah, Head of Communications at Ghana Gas, said the scheduled temporary shutdown, which would last between February 1 and February 25, 2018, is to allow our team of engineers to undertake a planned routine maintenance on the facility to help improve the plant’s capacity, as well as prolong its lifespan.
“All key stakeholders, including Ghana Gas, Tullow Oil, ENI, Volta River Authority (VRA) and Marinus, have put in place the necessary mechanisms to reduce the shutdown duration, which would have taken a total of 55 days to 25 days. The board of directors, management, operations team, together with all our partners, are working to ensure that there is minimal disruption to power supply during the period.
“During the shutdown, expansion works would be carried out on our regulating and metering station (RMS) infrastructure at Takoradi which would help increase gas handling capacity from the current 135mmscf/d to 405mmscf/d. The increased capacity would add 270mmscf/d to the facility.”
Ghana Gas also noted that major planned government projects such as the railways expansion and the fertilizer production plants and other key government industrialization projects are expected to benefit from the completion of the maintenance works.
Some key benefits also expected from the remediation and expansion works include an increased supply of 200mmscf/d together with ENI’s compressor; a tie-in at Sanzule to allow ENI to transport about 170mmscf/d of lean gas from the Western power enclave to the Eastern power corridor via the West African Gas pipeline; and a tie-in with Marinus to be undertaken for the delivery of isopentane which would be used for power production to minimize environmental impact.
“The board and management of Ghana Gas wish to assure all stakeholders that it will be working with its partners to ensure system stability during the shutdown period to minimize the impact on power supply.”
By Samuel Boadi